Rosy Buckwheat, Red Scythes: Soviet Jewish Abundance and Belonging in Moyshe Kulbak’s Raysn

• In Event: Postsecular Interpretations of Eastern European Literature and Art

Abstract

Moyshe Kulbak's 1922 Yiddish poem Raysn (an old name for Belarus) is notable for its fusion of Eastern European Jewish tropes with imagery and language from the Slavic pagan tradition. The poem’s intentional combination of seemingly clashing cultural reference points helps to convey the plurality of the Soviet Jewish experience. In particular, the natural landscape of Belarus emerges as a beloved–even sacred–space with which the central characters of the text are described to be nearly consubstantial. This paper will examine how the power of place in Raysn articulates an Eastern European Jewish identity and belonging vis-a-vis affective geography, as well as how the text seemingly reframes Belarus as the biblical promised land.

Author

• Elaine Wilson, Columbia U